“Your lip looks better,” he said, touching his own lip.
“Yeah. I put a lot of ice on it.”
“It’s good that you’re getting right back to work,” he said. “It’s definitely good.”
“Yup, well . . .” I said, even though I had nothing to say. “There’s a lot of work now, I guess. Explosive underpants and shit like that.”
“I heard you did a great job during the incident.”
I didn’t say anything.
“You climbed up on the roof of the warehouse, or something, right?” Bitton turned from the road to me, trying to catch my eye. I turned to him for a second and went back to the urban Jerusalem stone view that was fading into the green of the Jerusalem hills. I didn’t feel like talking about it − or about anything else.
“Yup, it was a real mess,” I said, and took a deep breath. I saw Ran Zander in the rearview mirror looking at me. When our eyes met, he turned away towards the window.
“It’s a shame he didn’t die,” he said with indifferent disappointment, as if he were discussing some sports or a Netflix series.
“It’s a good thing he didn’t die,” Bitton said, giving him the first lesson in intelligence. “It’s another lead in the investigation. Right, Evron? What do you think?”
“Maybe,” I said.
“Well, ummm… How’s school?” Bitton asked.
“I have to submit a proposition for a seminar next month, and I still haven’t even thought about what I’ll write. I didn’t take the last two exams, and the last one I did − I failed. How are you?”
His gaze was fixed on the road. “I’m fine,” he said.
I pretended to be asleep, but I’m bad at pretending. At a traffic light in the middle of the road, he asked me, “And do you intend to finish your degree?”
“Look, Bitton,” my eyes were closed, but I was far from sleeping, “don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m not in the mood.”
“Umm . . . Sure,” he said. “Sorry.”
The drive continued in silence. I put my earphones on and listened to music with a lot of guitars. I had a message from Lifshitz, the real-estate lawyer that Dad had introduced me to. He said that Reuven, Siman’s brother and my new partner in the deserted store in Afula, agreed to sell the store. He refused all those years because he didn’t want to help his brother. They had a big fight over a girl or something. He was shocked when Siman gave in and sold me his half. Lifshitz sent me the recording of the conversation between him and Reuven, and I heard him say to the lawyer, “That man has the ego of an ox. Maybe this is an opportunity to end the saga.”
The silence in the car continued as the music blasted in my ears for the entire ride to the well-known Israeli Shaolin temple, The Academy.
The instructor read the names from the trainees’ list: “Yochai Malka and Dan Fogel from the Southern District − here. Who’s here from the Jerusalem District? Ran Zander, Bitton, Itay Evron,” he stopped after saying my name and looked at me.
“Come see me during the warm-up,” he said.
Everyone started jogging around the training hall. They began with regular running, then changed to knees up, then ankles kicking back. The instructor was new in The Academy. It was the first time that an instructor seemed to be younger than me. He came up to me and asked if I was the guy who was in charge during the incident two days ago.
“Three days ago,” I corrected him.
“Are you sure you want to participate in training today? It’s okay if you don’t feel comfortable doing it,” he asked me, his eyebrows shooting up the same way the social worker’s had.
“I really am fine, thanks,” I tried to convince him − or maybe myself.
Shimi said that if I change my mind during the training, I should tell him. I remember his name was Shimi because when he turned around, I saw his name on the back of his shirt in English, as if he were some soccer player. They get those shirts on bonus missions when they train foreign armies overseas.
What I love about fighting practice is that I can put my brain on auto-pilot. All of my thoughts are left out of the fighting ring. I hardly even listen to the instructor, I just repeat after his and other trainees’ motions. If someone hits you, hit them back. Ever since I completed the Unified Security Course, I knew how to carry out almost every drill automatically.
These one-day training sessions are with the same mattresses from the course, the same techniques, and most of the time, even the same instructors. The main difference is the less strict and competitive atmosphere − the same mood differentiates between mandatory service and reserve duty in the army. But this was only the case during the first half of training, not the second half, which was shooting practice.
Shooting accidents happen from time to time. Surprisingly, they often occur specifically with experienced trainees.
Last year, a 40-year-old guy shot himself in the butt when he was putting the gun back in its holster. Another incidence took place two and a half years ago: One of the guards was in a hurry to get home and fired a bullet by accident that whistled by several ears. Three years ago, when I was starting the course, I remember some guy named David accidentally hitting his friend in the head with an ammunition crate while setting up a firing range.
Shooting exercises are usually not exhausting, but they’re dangerous as hell. The moment the cold metal touched my hands, all of my senses were alert. Our shooting training started after lunch, led by the almighty Eitan.
“Itay, you’re way off today,” Eitan said after the fourth round. “Way off” was an understatement.
I wasn’t hitting to the right or left of the targets. I wasn’t hitting anything. The hits were scattered, and no technical conclusion could be made about my shooting technique. It had to do with my lack of concentration.
I had always been behind everyone else in Krav Maga, but I had an aptitude for shooting. This time, however, the only target I was hitting was Bitton’s, firing in the lane next to me.
“Hey, look at me.” Eitan didn’t give up, “What’s going on?” He stood behind me on the firing line and examined my target. Before we even went over to check the holes in the cardboard, he knew I hadn’t hit anything. I stood there on the firing line like an idiot at a party I wasn’t invited to. I should have known I wasn’t going to hit anything.
“Dude, are you all right?” Bitton asked me. I was okay, but everything was spinning around me.
The cardboard terrorist in front of me turned into two terrorists, and I’m not sure who it was that shouted, “Get him some water!” but it wasn’t Eitan. Maybe it was the cardboard terrorist. If it was him, it means that even though he’s a terrorist, he’s still human, which is so confusing because Eitan grabbed my hand so firmly and took my gun from me as though I was actually the terrorist, and it really hurt because I fell down hard.
It felt good when they took me on a stretcher, like I was flying.
I had never seen the instructors’ room from the inside. I always thought it was fancier than the other rooms in The Academy, but it was just another room.
A poster was on the wall, showing some models of Australian Glock pistols. Austrian − it’s Austrian.
There were metal closets with white stickers with the handwritten names of the instructors on them.
I was lying on a black couch that looked just like . . .
It looked just like all the other couches in the office.
Bitton was sitting next to me, holding my hand. I think he was checking my pulse.
Eitan was running around the room in a frenzy, sticking two phones to both ears.
The door opened and someone’s head peeked in curiously. Eitan shouted at him to leave. “Out!”
I heard someone repeat in the loudspeaker: “Emergency, Emergency, firing range no. 4, medic to the instructor’s room.”
I tried to sit u
p, but Bitton’s hand held me down on the couch.
“Uh-uh,” he muttered. What’s the problem, man? I thought, but couldn’t speak.
“You need to rest, dude,” he said, and I tried to say so many things to him but all that came out was gibberish. He said the same thing again but backwards. “Man, you need to rest.”
The loudspeaker called out again, the sound of a siren could be heard from a distance, getting louder and closer.
Chapter 39
She canceled all her plans for the evening after the shortest phone call I can remember. “Hey, I fainted,” I said.
“Where are you now? In your apartment?”
“Yeah.”
“Coming. Bye.”
It took me a few minutes to start telling her the story. In the meantime, I made her tea, swept the kitchen floor, and suddenly sitting down to write my seminar paper didn’t seem like a bad idea.
“Are you cleaning? Who the hell are you?” she said.
I left the broom aside and served her the tea.
I told her everything that happened since Leroy’s death so far. She lit a cigarette just as I reached the volley of gunfire.
“Wow.” Libby massaged her high forehead.
We sat on the balcony and watched the usual traffic jam on Azza Street toward evening.
“I embarrassed myself,” I said, and looked down at my cup.
Maybe it was the wrinkle between her eyebrows, or something about the lighting, but she suddenly looked much older to me.
“You lost a friend, and you beat up some dude with your bare hands. What did you expect?” she asked me.
“Did you say . . . ‘dude’?”
“This terrorist, whatever. And if that’s not enough, your best friend was killed. It would be strange if you didn’t collapse.”
“A lot of people before me didn’t collapse.”
“Yeah, but it’s not as if you were completely fine before this, to say the least.”
“I was absolutely fine.”
“Ha-ha. Look at yourself,” she said. “You don’t even realize how fucked up you are.”
She exhaled a cloud of smoke from her cigarette. “You’re completely blind when it comes to yourself. You refuse to admit what bad shape you’re in. Stop repressing already.”
“I’m not repressing.”
She took in a long mouthful of smoke and nodded.
“Said the guy who has turned repression into a job with a pension program.”
I blinked to deny what she was saying.
“What about Keinan? When are you bringing him back?”
I was on the verge of tears.
“Stop asking me about that.”
“What about those poor Palestinians? How much longer will you barge into their villages like some sheriff?”
Libby’s wrinkle deepened, and her face reminded me of the old woman who asked for bread at the bakery.
“And what about poor Donna? How much longer are you going to keep lying to her?”
“I’m not lying to her.”
“You’re not telling her the truth. You know exactly what I mean.”
I didn’t say anything.
“We both know that this duality you forced on yourself is collapsing on you. You’re crumbling, my little Froggie.”
I went inside, headed to the kitchen and poured myself more tea, but that wasn’t the reason I went in. I needed to get up to get over the nausea I was feeling and to take a tissue to soak up my tears.
“Try to write it all down,” Libby suggested when I came back.
Write it down? What am I, a poet?
“Maybe writing will drain the pus in your head.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“It’s a sort of occupational therapy. It helped me when I needed it,” she told me.
There was silence, and we both sipped our drinks. We were having tea on my balcony instead of beer at Mahane Yehuda, because I didn’t feel like going out.
“What about you?” I said.
“What about . . . me?”
“Is it going to be the same story again?”
“What story?” She played dumb.
“That you go out secretly with someone for a year and then announce that you’re engaged?”
Libby put down her cup and smiled.
“Come on, Libby . . .” I urged her, but she just continued smiling and tapping on her empty cup.
I had already noticed the engagement ring on her finger an hour earlier.
“This time it’s real.”
I thought to myself − it was real last time as well. Doesn’t she learn? And what’s the point of being so secretive?
“That’s not fair! I tell you everything.”
“We’re not doing business, sweetheart.”
“Who is it? How long have you been together?”
The wedding wasn’t going to take place this year, maybe not at all. He proposed to her in the Negev Desert after they were hiking at night, under a full moon. She couldn’t think of a reason to say no. This doesn’t necessarily mean they will get married the traditional way. But still, they both felt this was the real deal.
“You always told me to take my time.”
“Yes,” she said, “but you’re a man. You don’t know how it feels to have a biological clock ticking.”
“Who is he? Where did you meet?”
The apartment door opened; it was Donna. “Oh my God! Are you all right?!” She slammed down her pink fabric bag from the supermarket and took off the turtle bag she carries with her everywhere.
“It was nice,” Libby sighed and got up. “Thanks for the tea.”
Donna gave me a warm, tight hug, a hug that made me feel that I belonged. A hug I didn’t deserve.
“Yes, uh . . . I’m all right. Libby here . . .” I said, looking at her confused, not knowing if I was allowed to share our confidential conversation.
“ . . . was listening to his nonsense,” Libby said, completing my sentence with her regular decisiveness. “I think I need to get going. Hi Donna, what’s up?” she said on her way out of my balcony.
“Hang in there. Bye,” she said and lightly slipped away.
Donna waited for Libby to leave and then sat down.
The prime minister’s convoy rushed down the street again, this time in the other direction. The sirens and honking killed every conversation in the neighborhood. Donna and I looked at each other and didn’t say a word.
Take your time, dear prime minister. I’d rather be silenced than face the truth any day of the week.
Donna sat there, looking me at me silently. It was clear I was the one who needed to start talking.
“I fainted,” I said.
“I know,” she said, and patted my toes that were clinging to the edge of her chair.
“I don’t know why I fainted,” I said. My neck muscles tightened as I looked all the way down to the floor. Ever since Liza, looking Donna in the eye had become a struggle.
“Did anyone take care of you over there?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Who?”
“The staff.”
Her soft hand rested on my thigh like she was pressing a wound. This invisible button she was pushing sent up a stream of tears through my throat, straight to my eyes and down to my cheeks.
I don’t even know why I cried, but with Donna there, sobbing felt less pathetic.
Donna patted the back of my neck and tried to console me, but I couldn’t even hear her because I was focused on letting it all out. Not in words, but in sobs.
I had become the dazed guy of the unit, a shadow of myself. When I come back home, I can’t look Donna in the eye.
Not suitable for my profession. Undeserving of love. Torn.
Donna held me for a while, caressing me as though she could continue like this forever. I looked up at her with a wet face.
“My hero,” she said.
God, she is going to be disappointed.
Chapter 40
Ya’acov Siman handed me his phone after pressing the “play” button in the recording app.
“Hello.” I heard Siman’s voice
“Hi,” some stranger responded.
“Who is this?”
“It’s Reuven,” the stranger said.
“Reuven . . .”
“Yes.”
“No kidding.”
“You’re breathing so heavily, Ya’acov. Didn’t you know you have a brother?”
“I almost forgot.”
“So, this is it?”
“This is it. Enough.”
“This kid convinced you? You gave up just like that?”
“I would pay him to take it from me. Reuven, what do you want? Do you want to know that you won? Here, I’m saying it: You win. Is there anything else you want?”
“Why did you sell him your half? You thought he would give me a hard time? So here I am telling you: I let him sell the store. He can do whatever he wants with it, and I’ll get half.”
“Good luck to you, Reuven.”
“How much did you sell it for?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“I’m just curious.”
“Don’t be curious, Reuven. You weren’t curious about me for 20 years. Don’t start now.”
“Fine. How is Sima?”
“Thank God.”
“And the kids?”
“In good health, thank God.”
“I heard Zehavit had a bat-mitzvah. Congratulations.”
“Thank you, Reuven. What about your eldest? He must be a soldier by now?”
“My son Dror? What a great kid. He finished the army two years ago. He’s getting married in April.”
“Time flies. Mazal Tov.”
“Thank you, Ya’acov.”
“Okay, Reuven. Nice to hear from you, happy Hanukkah.”
“Thank you, Ya’acov, you too. All the best.”
“Amen.”
“Ya’acov?”
Fracture Point Page 21
